Category: SEO

SEO is a complex beast, and it is not always easy for clients to understand the purpose of SEO, or what it does! Here’s some advice to help you explain SEO to your clients.

SEO should be broken down into two parts: Optimisation and Authority. This includes terms such as “site” and “search engine”, best for clients who already know a little bit about the internet.

How Optimisation Relates to SEO

Your client needs to know that optimisation allwos search engines to read the website, and evaluate it. You could explain that optimisation allows a search engine to read the content of your website. The search engine will then display your site in the results when someone searches for the keywords that appear on your site.

Authority and SEO

Your client also needs to understand that having authority proves to the search engine that his or her website is the best website. For example, you could say the more authority your website has, the higher up on the search results it will be. Having your website appear on others will prove to the search engine that your site is better than all others on the same topic. Basically, SEO is two things: allowing search engines to display your website when people search for it, and convincing search engines to place it before other sites in the results.

Category: SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and it is a range of tools and techniques used by businesses to boost their website rankings on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. SEO is important for websites in order to get them more visible to their target audiences, and good SEO techniques can make a huge difference to sales and conversions for businesses.

The main part of any SEO campaign is the selection of appropriate keywords. Keywords are the terms searched for on the search engines by users looking for a particular product or service. For exmaple, you might type in something along the lines of “hairdresser in Birmingham” and expect to find a list of hairdressers within the Birmingham area.

Once you have compiled a list of target keywords, you need to get these keywords onto your site in a way that google et al can read easily. This is usually within the content and heading tags of the pages. These pages will have backlinks from other websites to yours, which strengthen the pages for thier keywords.

Category: SEO

PPC or Pay Per Click is a highly effective marketing tool introduced by Google to allow business to pay for coveted sponsored spots on the search results pages for their website and keywords. PPC is by no means a long term answer to ranking highly on Google, however it does allow businesses to make some quick wins and get more visitors to their site.

The most important thing to know about PPC is that is does not guarantee higher sales. If you get lots more people to your site, the liklihood of them purchasing is going to be increased, however if the content is not great, the customer is unlikely to purchase. PPC gets people through the door, but it cannot make people buy things! Make sure you get the content on your site right before you start your PPC campaign.

It is important to get an experienced and qualified PPC account manager to help you establish your campaign – Google AdWords Certified individuals are more likely to get better results from the campaign than someone who hasn’t really used it before.

Category: SEO

Paid advertising through search engines such as Google and their PPC advertising is a great way to quickly generate more visitors and sales through your website. PPC stands for Pay Per Click, and it is a highly effective tool for advertising your site.

Normally, websites have to use organic SEO techniques to get their websites seen on search engines. PPC almost acts as a bypass to this system, allowing users to locate your site quickly. It basically works by companies bidding on their keywords and agreeing to pay a small fee each time someone clicks on their advert. These adverts are displayed as “sponsored links” on the search engine results page.

These little fees paid each time a user clicks are usually small, only a matter of pence each time, however depending on how competitive the keyword is, they could be much more expensive. PPC is not normally used as a long term solution, but as an additional boost while an organic SEO campaign takes place.

Category: SEO

Getting your pages to rank well on search engines is a tricky task – there are lots of aspects which go towards the ranking algorithm which Google et al use. It is important to separate the different aspects first.

Content

The content of your pages is one of the most important factors. You need to have plenty of content – aim for around 800-1000 words per page if you can! This way you can include plenty of keyword rich phrases to boost the relevancy of your site.

Headings

The heading tags are crucial to let Google know what your page is about. You should have exactly 1 H1 tag and several H2 tags to support the H1. This is the way search engines read the page to see what the topic is.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

These are also very important for search engines to read in order to rank your page. Make sure you have an optimised title tag, which allows both bots and real users to understand what your page and site is for. The description should be your sales pitch!

Category: SEO

Most SEO specialists have a good knowledge of PPC (pay per click) and actively try to get their customers away from this paid form of marketing – there simply isn’t a real need for it in today’s world! SEO with organic means should be enough to make a big difference to your search engine visibility alone, without the need to spend a fortune on PPC budgets too.

PPC is a form of sponsored advertising where your listing can be placed higher up on Google for a fee, which is paid each time someone clicks on your link. The cost per click varies depending on the industry and how competitive the keyword is. Some are only a matter of pence per click, however some keywords are incredibly valuable and are worth a fortune per click!

Recomdations are to speak to an SEO specialist about whether your brand would benefit from a short PPC campaign (particularly if you are a new site or have been hit by poor quality SEO previously).

Category: SEO

Many of us will have a social media account of one type or another, but lots of our businesses do not realise just what a great tool social media can be for thier marketing campaigns.

Just think – where else can you get the opportunity to really interact with your target demographic on the same scale? At a business exhibition perhaps, or in a physical store if you have one, but social media really does offer a unique chance to learn and discover more about your target audience than ever before!

The great thing about advertising on social media is that you can tailor your ad right down to specific groups of people, specific interests, ages, locations and genders. It allows great control over who gets to see your advert which makes it a very powerful advertising tool.

Your money can be spent in a wise way, with a specified group being targetted to see your ad, who are much more likely to be interested in your services and goods.

Category: SEO

When you have a new website built, or you build one yourself, it is important that is is appealing to the people you want it to appeal to. This means you need to make it work and look a certain way in order to get visitors to stop on the site and browse it’s contents.

One way to make your site look nice is to make sure you do not cram too much text in. It is difficult to read on a screen, so make it easier for your customers by breaking up chunks of text with images and paragraph breaks. It is very important to get the colours right here too, as if the background is too contrasting to the text, this can be difficult to read also.

Another way to keep visitors happy on your site is to have easy to view navigation panels. If you want clients and customers to be able to find different pages of your site easily (such as when you have an online shop with multiple categories), you will want to have menus laid out nicely.

Category: SEO

As website owners, we keep an eye on the visitor numbers to the site, and usually expect to see this number either grow or stay roughly the same month on month. It can happen sometimes that the traffic drops to the site. What causes this?

Sometimes it is purely a seasonal issue – if you sell items which are mainly based around particular seasons or times of year, you can expect the traffic to drop when you are out of your season.

On the other hand, it could be that your keyword rankings are dropping, making your site less visible to customers on Google etc. In this scenario, it is important that you check over the content of your pages and ensure you have enough relevant and keyword rich content. This is how Google et al make their choices about how to rank your site. If there isn’t enough content, it simply cannot rank you effectively.

Categories

Web Design for Schools

If you are looking for a school website to be built, it might be worth looking for a company who specialise in bespoke web design for schools. This way you can ensure the site will match the requirements of the school whilst functioning well and looking beautiful.